I have the house 98% designed.

What types of questions will a pro designer be asking?

Location: 41 degrees latitude

Main part of the house with windows faces N36W or 323 degrees on a compass (how else should I articulate this for your needs)

I have floor plans galore and I can export to DXF file format

Other wise the design is an open book and I'm willing to consider all suggestions.

We can take this off forum, if preferred.  I know there are a few of you pros on here that design systems, so please let me know what I need to do to start that dialogue.


TIA-John

A competent radiant floor designer will need the address, fuel sources/cost and a simple floor plan in pdf or CAD with windows, doors and insulation called out on the plan. The rest is academic my dear Watson...

Plus the all too often forgotten "air infiltration".

There is no present address, but there is an AP#. There won't be an address assigned by the county until the building permit is issued and that is a min 12 months away (maybe 18) and I need to tweak the design now, as I need to have my plans in place with the county planning office and then on to the coastal commission for a development permit. Then I can apply for and obtain a building permit, and subsequently be issued an actual street address. I can provide the designer the 1000 block of "x" road though. Or give an established address of a close neighbor.

On the subject of air infiltration, none of that has been established...assuming the designer will dictate that.

I can export floor plans to DXF format which can be read inAutocad or any number of free DXF readers... or I can export to JPEG, and then will have to figure out how to convert to PDF from jpeg, as my design program (Chief Architect) does not export to PDF natively.

Feel free to PM contact info and/or post on this thread.

I can export floor plans to DXF format which can be read inAutocad or any number of free DXF readers... or I can export to JPEG, and then will have to figure out how to convert to PDF from jpeg, as my design program (Chief Architectvp) does not export to PDF natively.

There are several PDF writers that you can install as a printer on your computer (cutepdf is a decent one) and just print it to a pdf file. Or if you have acrobat standard or pro, they have plugins available for most drawing software.

DXF is fine. The country and county would suffice or closest big town will often do. Infiltration is estimate or confirmed with a blower door test after the fact. For venitation ASHRAE 62.2 is built in to all good HVAC/radiant floor programs.

All is in my profile and the my esteemed colleagues as well.

From his other posts referring to coastal CA, and the 41 degrees latitude datapoint it sounds like Humboldt County, Eureka/Arcata. The actual elevation at the site may become important if it's in the hills rather than on the coast.

Posted By Dana1 on 30 Apr 2013 11:44 AM
From his other posts referring to coastal CA, and the 41 degrees latitude datapoint it sounds like Humboldt County, Eureka/Arcata. The actual elevation at the site may become important if it's in the hills rather than on the coast.

Specifically 1 mile north of Trinidad...coastal bluff.  Lot of of trees but none blocking the roof (where I also hope to install PV), in fact all trees are 50' away.

I will contact a few of you by phone or email to start the process.